Page:The Story of Philosophy.pdf/453

 Livy's, nor with a biographical history like Carlyle's; he will look in human history for those general lines of development, those causal sequences, those illuminating correlations, which transform the wilderness of facts into the chart of science. What biography is to anthropology, history is to sociology. Of course there are a thousand obstacles that the study of society must yet overcome before it can deserve the name of science. The young study is harassed by a multitude of prejudices—personal, educational, theological, economic, political, national, religious; and by the ready omniscience of the uninformed. "There is a story of a Frenchman who, having been three weeks here, proposed to write a book on England; who, after three months, found that he was not quite ready; and who, after three years, concluded that he knew nothing about it." Such a man was ripe to begin the study of sociology. Men prepare themselves with life-long study before becoming authorities in physics or chemistry or biology; but in the field of social and political affairs every grocer's boy is an expert, knows the solution, and demands to be heard.

Spencer's own preparation, in this case, was a model of intellectual conscience. He employed three secretaries to gather data for him, and to classify the data in parallel columns giving the domestic, ecclesiastical, professional, political, and industrial institutions of every significant people. At his own expense he published these collections in eight large volumes, so that other students might verify or modify his conclusions; and the publication being unfinished at his death, he left part of his little savings to complete the undertaking. After seven years of such preparation, the first volume of the Sociology appeared in 1876; not until 1896 was the last one ready. When everything else of Spencer's has become